Having watched a little boy through such a state of affairs (and these cases are generally boys), with a knowledge that it was the curative process after tubercular meningitis, he is found today to be the healthiest of the family; he was cured. Two of the same family had died of a similar trouble.
A young man would never be permitted to cure a case like that, it would be impossible for the parents to believe that he told the truth he said it was a necessary process of cure.
When the Hellebore state comes on,take the mother aside, tell her what the child must go through in order to get well, make her swear she will stand by you through thick and thin. Ask her if she wishes her child to live or die; if the latter leave him then. She may say, “Since you have told me what will happen, I will stand by you,” but even then, when the time comes, she will need to be reminded, she was “told so, told that she would have to go through two good months of anxiety and distress.”
For three or four weeks the child lies like a skeleton. Not knowing these facts in relation to the process of recovery, what could be done except to make a fatal error? When the friends stand about, or clinging to you, beg for help for their child, what but a knowledge of that process can help? The child goes down into the shadow of death, the skin, the muscles, the sensories are paralyzed, and there is numbness everywhere. The most natural occurrence in the return of sensation to the paralyzed parts is like that when sensation returns to a frozen hand; a creeping and crawling as if that portion of the body was filled with ants.
The sensation is dreadful, but not painful, the creeping and crawling is awful; Zincum is often indicated in the terrible emaciation following brain diseases, cholera infantum, etc.
This is a condition produced by Zincum, and what patients have complained of that have died of Zinc. poisoning; “as if there was creeping and crawling, and tingling all over the body. “This symptom occurs in the patient needing, or cured by Zinc., because they must come back through its own pathogenesis.
There are many peculiar things to be learned of Zincum. The inflammatory conditions are somewhat like Ignatia. The inflamed parts are better from pressure. It has a sore throat with a pain that is worse between the acts of swallowing. Highly susceptible, nervous patients, who have chronic sore throats, and the pain is better from swallowing solids. Here Ignatia and Zincum are somewhat alike. Zincum is complementary to Ignatia. Zincum and Nux vomica are inimical; it seems strange that it is so, as they are twin sisters.
The spinal symptoms are attended with a great deal of tingling, burning, soreness and sensitiveness to pressure.
Spinal symptoms are associated with paralysis of the bladder and rectum, prolonged and tedious constipation, urine slow in starting to flow. Can pass urine only when sitting, in some cases of greater progression, can only pass urine sitting and leaning backward against the seat with hard pressure. Such symptoms occur with spinal troubles. The aching in the spine is in the dorsal, lumbar and sacral regions; it is better walking, and worse on rising from a seat. In Rhus we have aching in the sacral region that is bettered by walking, and comes on when he sits for some time. Calcarea, Phosphorus, Sulphur, Rhus, and Sepia have this symptom in the highest degree. Zincum occupies a lower grade in the aggravation on rising from a seat. Petroleum and Ledum have it in a lower degree.
In neuralgic affections Zincum is a very important remedy; neuralgia after Zoster. After the spinal symptoms have gone on for some time, numbness begins in the soles of the feet, and cutting pain with soreness in the heel when stepping upon it. There is also numbness of the lower portions of the legs.
Another feature of a disease of the spinal cord that Zincum has cured may be associated with “Tabes Dorsalis,” “Multiple Sclerosis,” etc., and that is the fulgurating pains that are present; the stitching, stabbing and tearing.
The frequency of tearing pains throughout the remedy is noticeable. Zincum resembles Plumbum in its tearing, rending pains with burning. Arsenicum has pains as if hot needles were here and there, showing the affection of the smaller nerves.
Rending, tearing headaches, bettered somewhat by pressure, and worse in warm room, better in the open air. This is peculiar to the headaches in general, while the pains of the body are often better by heat.
Zincum sometimes enters into a copious sweat, with extreme
sensitiveness to pain. It has no amelioration from the sweat, and wants to be wrapped with a great amount of clothing. Warmth becomes necessary when the symptoms are in the lower extremities, or lower part of the spine, i.e., the most outward portions of the body. The symptoms of the head belong to the central system.
Zincum has many prominent eye symptoms. Sulphate of Zinc. has been used by the Old School for burning off granulations upon the lids, and they have found that the granulations are more likely to remain away under the application of Sulphate of Copper. These medicines have cured granular lids when given in the highest potencies. Dunham cured a pterygium with Zincum, but the general symptoms of the drug were present. Dunham had intended to have the patient operated upon, surgically, but the improvement was so great during the summer that when cold weather came he trusted Zincum to finish the case, and it did.
I once heard an oculist say he had tried Zincum in many cases, and that it failed every time, hence Dunham must have made a mistake. Dunham was wise, he cured the patient, and the eye was of course cured also. If Zincum corresponds to the symptoms of the patient it will be more likely to cure the pterygium, because it produces that kind of thickening of the inner canthus, with shooting, stitching, tearing pains, in the inner canthi of both eyes. This was present in Dunhams case. The muco-purulent discharge need not be present.
Another feature is the intense photophobia; he cannot stand the light, he becomes almost blind from the intense light close to his eyes. Zincum has also cured the white opacities that form upon the cornea.
It has some peculiar and striking heart symptoms; constriction of the heart and whole chest, in weakly, debilitated subjects. I have cured heart diseases where all sorts of medicines has been used, and in spite of Digitalis, Strophanthus, etc., Zinc. did the work fairly well.
Zincum has vomiting of water as soon as it reaches the stomach, like Bismuth. Wine and stimulants aggravate all the symptoms of Zincum. There are headaches, with constriction of the brain after the slightest indulgence in spirits; sugar, wine and milk aggravate Zincum patients. Sugar and milk produce vomiting.
Dry, scaly eruptions over the body. It is suitable when any eruption disappears and neuralgia follows.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.